James D. Corrothers
James David Corrothers (1869–1917) was an African-American poet, journalist, and minister whom editor T. Thomas Fortune called "the coming poet of the race." When he died, W. E. B. Du Bois eulogized him as "a serious loss to the race and to literature."[1][2]
Corrothers was born in Michigan and grew up in a small town of anti-slavery activists who settled before the war. He attended Northwestern University in Chicago but left to work a newspaper reporter. He met and established a friendship Frederick Douglass at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition[3][4] In his autobiography, Corrothers claimed credit for bringing another poet's work, Paul Laurence Dunbar's, to the attention of William Dean Howells[5] Corrothers shared a long friendship with his contemporary Paul Laurence Dunbar [6] and, after Dunbar's death, memorialized him with the poem "Paul Laurence Dunbar," published in Century Magazine (1912). In 1922, James Weldon Johnson published seven poems by Corrothers in the anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922).
Works
- The Snapping of the Bow, 1901
- The Black Cat Club, 1902
- At the Closed Gate of Justice, 1913
- In Spite of the Handicap, 1916
References
- ^ Gaines, Kevin. "Assimilationist minstrelsy as racial uplift ideology: James D. Corrothers's literary quest for black leadership." American Quarterly (1993): 341
- ^ "The Looking Glass," The Crisis, April 1917 p. 287
- ^ James D. Corrothers, In Spite of the Handicap (New York: George H. Doran Company) 1916
- ^ Bruce, Dickson D. "James Corrothers Reads a Book; or, the Lives of Sandy Jenkins." African American Review (1992): 665-673.
- ^ James D. Corrothers, In Spite of the Handicap (New York: George H. Doran Company) 1916, p. 143-144.
- ^ Alexander, Eleanor. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore: a History of Love and Violence Among the African American Elite. NYU Press, 2001. p. 15
External links
- Errin Jackson, Corrothers, James David (1869-1917), blackpast.org
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